The tiniest house in Auckland’s inner-city suburb of Grey Lynn has sold for just under $300,000.
The former Auckland Gas Company shed on a tiny 33sqm slice of land on Tuarangi Road had an asking price of $295,000, and sold for “very close to that”, said Ray White agent Josh Powell, who marketed the property with Jared Cooksley. The property has a CV of $185,000.
The buyer, lawyer Kchitij Tiwari, said that he and his wife bought the site to turn into a home for them and their four-year-old son. Tiwari told One Roof that he had always tossed up between living in a standalone house or a penthouse, but yearned for a slice of heritage too.
The property was sold with consented plans to retain the façade and walls of the original shed, wrapping it in a modern three-storey home with a roof deck.
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“Now I can say I have a house and a penthouse. I wanted some connection with the heritage, I wanted Grey Lynn or Ponsonby or Parnell,” he said, adding that he’d been drawn to the Orakei Basin boatsheds for their historic connection, but they could not be lived in.
Tiwari and his wife, who preferred not to be named, plan to extend the resource consent so they can spend a year working on the design and lining up finance to turn the property into their family home, but he said they liked the plans by architect Hamish Stirrat of Fabricate Architecture.
The new owners intend to keep some of the shed structure in their new home, which they're dubbing their heritage house/penthouse. Photo / Supplied
“We want a really good construction, we want to retain the heritage, do it once and do it properly.
“We don’t want to look at a corner and say ‘I saved $10,000 on that’. For us, it’s about place, heritage, house and penthouse,” he said. The couple plan to move from their Mount Eden home and law office “even if it means I have to park the Bentley on the street” so that their son can go to the local school.
Powell said that interest in the tiny property, which came with plans to wrap the original brick shed with a three-storey glass and concrete gallery, one-bedroom apartment and roof terrace, was huge.
“We had tons of people enquiring and doing due diligence,” he told OneRoof.
Concepts for the site which included three floors of living and a roof-top deck will be tweaked to make it a family home. Photo / Fabricate Architects
“We ended up with two offers, and then a lot more backing up. A lot were Grey Lynn locals, others were just interested in an opportunity to get something started, a blank canvas compared to the usual villas.
“Lots of people loved the idea, but hadn’t got their finance to do a project,” Powell said, adding that the sale settles in January 2023.
The Tuarangi Road site, just around the corner from the Grey Lynn shops on Great North Road and Williamson Avenue, has a turn of last century 9sqm brick shed that once housed a pumping station for Auckland Gas Company.
The site would have views to the Waitakere Ranges from the top floors. Photo / Supplied
Owners Cameron Woodcock and Gavin Hurley – Woodcock owns Ponsonby treasure trove Flotsam and Jetsam, Hurley is a well-known artist – had bought the plot in 2017 for $268,900, and planned for the floor glass box “display cabinet” to be a gallery for Hurley’s work. They sold to focus on a project in Whanganui.
Tiwari said the family may turn the proposed gallery into another private space, and tweak the design to create his dream of a penthouse with views across the west to the Waitakere Ranges.
